Friday, October 12, 2007

Stealing

You shall not steal (Exodus 20:15).

An employee assigned the responsibility to open the store at 10:00 each morning routinely arrives at work between 10:15 to 10:20. He always fills out his time sheet as having arrived at 9:55 a.m.

The president of a major corporation overextends himself, making it impossible to keep up on the payments for his new Ferrari. He spends late nights at the office adjusting the company records so that he can take a couple million dollars for himself, and make it look as though the money was lost on the stock market.

A woman who is stuck in a low-paying job accidentally spills hot coffee on her arm while in a fast-food drive-through. When she realizes that she has received a 1st degree burn, she decides to profit from this mishap by suing the fast-food company for a quarter of a million dollars.

A high school girl has a cocaine addiction. With her wallet empty, and desperate for more of the drug, she takes money from her mother’s purse while Mom is in the kitchen cooking dinner.

These four people all have one thing in common—they are all thieves.

Put simply, stealing is taking some kind of property from someone else without their permission. Stealing is about improperly taking money or the things that money can buy from another person. But although we usually think of stealing as something obvious like purse snatching or breaking and entering, stealing can also be a subtle, sneaky sin that even people who pride themselves on honesty can find themselves guilty of.

The first example of theft that I mentioned above is the theft of time. How much time we can devote to working determines how much money we can make, and the amount of time that we invest in a project will determine its overall quality and final value. When our time is wasted, our ability to produce results is reduced. This is why we resent junk mail on our desk and spam in our e-mail; these things waste our time, time that needs to be devoted to something more important. Wasting time becomes a sin when it hurts another person financially. If a person reports late to work, takes excessively long breaks, or leaves early, but fills out his time sheet as if he kept to the schedule, he bills the company for work he did not do, and the company pays for service it did not receive. The employee has stolen from the company.

This is a form of laziness. Laziness is expecting other people to take care of you, when you are perfectly capable of caring for yourself. When you are lazy, you are stealing time from other people. A lazy child steals his parents’ time by not making his bed, leaving his dirty cloths on the floor, or by expecting his parents to help him with his homework by telling him what the correct answers are. A lazy husband or wife steals their spouse’s time by refusing to help with household chores, neglecting to provide care and discipline to the children, or by failing to promote family growth through activities like joint participation in church events or shared leisure activities. When a man or woman is saddled with a lazy spouse or child, that person has to work harder at home to compensate, and has less energy to earn a living when they are at work.

A related form of stealing is cheating. Cheating is just another way to be lazy. A college student who cheats on an exam wants a good grade and the good job offers that could follow, but without having to work for them. A cheat ends up less qualified for a job than the person who learned through diligent study; a cheat ends up cheating an employer out of profits by being less productive than the employer expected, due to his lack of proper learning.

And then there are the people who file frivolous lawsuits. This is yet one more example of being lazy. Instead of seeking more skills to earn better pay, many people in America hire a lawyer to get them easy money by accusing a business of being negligent. The most silly case I’ve heard of is the person who is sued a fast-food franchise for serving junk food that resulted in the plaintiff now being fat! But with juries constantly giving huge settlements to people who never exercised common sense or personal responsibility, there is always a lawyer ready to represent a person who wants to make a quick buck.

In a sense, all stealing boils down to two things—laziness and impatience. We do not like to work hard, and we are unwilling to wait until we have saved enough to buy what we want. We get credit cards so that we can "buy now, pay later". But for those who cannot get credit, stealing can become an alternative. And our society even honors thieves in some cases. Robin Hood was "justified" in thievery because he stole from the selfish rich and redistributed wealth to the poor. There is a certain charm to the stories of Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James and the like, because they were people who knew what they wanted and took it. Movies like The Godfather and shows like The Sopranos reveal the American interest in getting wealthy at any price, even if the price is cheating, swindling, and stealing.

In Exodus chapter 20, God issued this simple Commandment: You shall not steal. In a more subtle fashion, Jesus reminded us not to steal when He taught us to pray, give us this day our daily breadours, not somebody else’s. This petition of the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that everything that we have comes as a gift from God; when we steal, we are taking what God intended for somebody else and are making it our own. This is why stealing is a sin. Stealing is our way of telling our Lord, "God, I don’t like the way that You have distributed money in this world. I know better than You what I really need and what my neighbor really needs, so I am going to fix the mistake You made of giving him too much and me not enough".

When we steal, we show that we do not trust God to take care of our real needs. Jesus said, do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:31-33). If we take Jesus at His word, there is no need to steal, because He has promised that God will see to our needs. Of course, it is understood that we do not expect God to fill our bellies if we are lazy; Paul writes, "If a man will not work, he shall not eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Proverbs 10:4 declares: Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. This is because God blesses the hands that are busy in service to Him.

Jesus trusted God. When Jesus went 40 days without food in the desert, Satan tried to get Jesus to stop waiting on His heavenly Father and take matters into His own hands by turning stones into bread. But instead of giving in to the sins of impatience and lack of trust, Jesus instead responded: "It is written: `Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God' " (Matthew 4:4). Because Jesus trusted His Father to provide for Him in all ways during His earthly life among us, Jesus never gave in to the temptation to steal. Nor was Jesus lazy. He worked hard, keeping long hours teaching and healing and travelling; Scripture tells us that He became tired (John 4:6). Today, we take great comfort in Jesus words, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working" (John 5:17). There is never a time that our risen, glorified Lord who looks down from heaven is not attentive to our needs.

St. John says this about Judas, he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it (John 12:6). It was Judas who betrayed Jesus into the hands of those who wanted His death, and Judas committed this crime for the sake of money. Judas profited at Jesus’ expense; the Pharisees later referred to the 30 silver coins involved as blood money (Matthew 27:6). Jesus’ life was taken because of thieves; Jesus allowed His life to be taken in order to save thieves. By the agonizing hours of suffering on the cross culminating with His death, Jesus suffered God’s anger at every act of theft, every incident of cheating, every moment of laziness that each of us have been guilty of. Jesus died for us willingly, trusting that His loving Father would not let His Holy One see decay in the grave (Psalm 16:10), but would instead raise Him up so that He could lead all repentant believers out from their graves to follow Him into heaven.

Paul wrote near the end of his life: godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that (1 Timothy 6:6-8). If you are content with what God has chosen to give you, you will not feel the need to cheat or steal from others. If you dedicate your time and energy to doing work that is pleasing to God and beneficial to others, He has promised to see to your true needs. God never promises luxurious living. But God does promise to give you what you need so that you can serve Him faithfully with your life. Pray to the Lord for food for your stomach and work for your hands, and the Lord will give you more than enough to see you through.

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